|
In the Intellectual Kosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the
Intellectual-Principle [Divine Mind] as the noblest of its
content, but containing also souls, since every soul in this
lower sphere has come thence: that is the world of unembodied
spirits while to our world belong those that have entered body
and undergone bodily division.
There the Intellectual-Principle is a concentrated all- nothing
of it distinguished or divided- and in that kosmos of unity all
souls are concentrated also, with no spatial discrimination.
But there is a difference:
The Intellectual-Principle is for ever repugnant to distinction
and to partition. Soul, there without distinction and partition,
has yet a nature lending itself to divisional existence: its
division is secession, entry into body.
In view of this seceding and the ensuing partition we may
legitimately speak of it as a partible thing.
But if so, how can it still be described as indivisible?
In that the secession is not of the soul entire; something of it
holds its ground, that in it which recoils from separate
existence.
The entity, therefore, described as "consisting of the undivided
soul and of the soul divided among bodies," contains a soul which
is at once above and below, attached to the Supreme and yet
reaching down to this sphere, like a radius from a centre.
Thus it is that, entering this realm, it possesses still the
vision inherent to that superior phase in virtue of which it
unchangingly maintains its integral nature. Even here it is not
exclusively the partible soul: it is still the impartible as
well: what in it knows partition is parted without partibility;
undivided as giving itself to the entire body, a whole to a
whole, it is divided as being effective in every part.
|
|